{"id":43021,"date":"2019-02-28T17:27:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T23:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=43021"},"modified":"2019-09-26T11:37:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T17:37:38","slug":"danae-mattes-helps-us-remember-the-land-at-byu-museum-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/danae-mattes-helps-us-remember-the-land-at-byu-museum-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Danae Mattes Helps Us Remember the Land at BYU Museum of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Danae Mattes “Evaporation Pool X” surrounded by “Sonnet”<\/p><\/div>\n

The dynamism of the natural world surrounds us: we are part of systems that grow and decay, process and alter on a continual basis. Nothing is static as matter and substance morph sometimes imperceptibly, and sometimes so dramatically it\u2019s jarring to witness. These changes are at the heart of Danae Mattes\u2019 current exhibition, Where the River Widens<\/em> at BYU\u2019s Museum of Art. Each work, whether constructed on the ground, suspended from the ceiling, or hanging on the walls presents worlds that draw us into sensory experiences of memory: memory of landscapes, of outdoor activities feeling water and mud glide between our toes, running our fingers over the cracks of mud dried in the hot summer sun. Mattes evokes and adds to our memories through the rich colors of the land and sky that surrounds us.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mattes\u2019 central, dramatic work is the circular installation \u201cEvaporation Pool X.\u201d Time-lapse videos on both the museum\u2019s and the artist\u2019s websites present us with the artist in action, working with volunteers to create a clay-based platform. Multiple videos on YouTube provide bursts of activity during the creation of the platform, while more recent videos hark back to the seemingly slow process of nature\u2019s changes. Mattes guides her material so it takes on its own process of change: as water is added to the clay bed, and dries, the bed is activated and the process of entropy, the gradual shift from order to disorder, ensues.<\/h4>\n

The pool is dramatic in its beauty and physicality, certainly for those of us who live in Western states and observe the fissures and cracks of dried river beds: we need look no further than to Great Salt Lake and its many desiccated micro-regions that have dried up due to drought. The effects of drought in the physical world are much starker than presented in a gallery setting, though, and can\u2019t be observed passively. It\u2019s one thing to see this process as art, another to experience its impact in the real world.<\/h4>\n

\u201cEvaporation Pool X\u201d is surrounded by \u201cSonnet,\u201d 14 panels in brown and blue propped against the wall to serve as sentinels, vertical markers that lift up the horizontality of the pool. We are in effect surrounded by ground: clay that is used to mimic land, that represents land and becomes \u2014 from the ground up \u2014 the sky. The gallery space contains additional works, including the large-format \u201cAlluvial Interiors IV\u201d (2007), a related work of desiccated clay on paper that serves as a stark, potentially cautionary tale of drought through a monochromatic palette.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Danae Mattes’ “River Fold”<\/p><\/div>\n

A second gallery is filled with more large-format works and the installation, \u201cRiver Fold\u201d (2018, mixed media). The museum\u2019s curator\/head of education Janalee Emmer says that Mattes\u2019 process of melding wire, clay, and pigment (startling cobalt blue) establishes a space that viewers can experience based on their own time and meandering movements. While each strand is hung in a regimented pattern, there is an ethereal quality to the piece: The top of each wire is almost invisible given the bright, almost white coloration of the clay, while the cobalt tips draw the viewers\u2019 eye to the floor and tension created between color, space, movement, and rest.<\/h4>\n

A wall piece, \u201cPassage II\u201d (2013, clay, paper, pigment on canvas), draws an immediate, visceral response. Its beauty is otherworldly and startling as landscape and skyscape are rendered through sheer abstraction. The materiality of the canvas\u2019 surface is complex, evoking decay, ruin, and layers of entropy rendered minutely. This work is the embodiment of the sublime, depicting a world both beautiful and frightening, one we can\u2019t help but enter knowing it contains equal measures of darkness and light. One recalls the British artist J.M.W. Turner\u2019s later abstractions, and in a more complex comparison, a close read of this canvas resembles up-close views of American artist Richard Serra\u2019s steel slabs in their rough beauty.<\/h4>\n

Mattes\u2019 work is presented in conjunction with another long-term installation, \u201cWindswept\u201d by Patrick Dougherty. The synergistic play between each artists\u2019 work is expertly orchestrated by the museum\u2019s curators: nature in its various forms, vertical and horizontal, still and soaring in space. Adjacent to both installations is a research room that places their works within the context of the Earth art movement. Through eight large didactic panels (including \u201cDissolutions of Boundaries,\u201d \u201cLand Art: Beginnings,\u201d and \u201cTime and Entropy\u201d) and two videos from PBS Digital Studio\u2019s excellent program \u201cThe Art Assignment\u201d (\u201cArt Trip: Utah\u201d and \u201cThe Case for Land Art\u201d), museum visitors can realize their experience of the museum\u2019s installations within the context of the broader movements that led to contemporary considerations of working with natural materials.<\/h4>\n
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Danae Mattes’ “Resrvoir,” clay, paper and pigment on canvas, 2014, with a view of Patrick Dougherty’s “Windswept”<\/p><\/div>\n

Where the River Widens<\/em>, installations and other works by Danae Mattes, and Windswept, an installation by Patrick Dougherty, Brigham Young University Museum of Art<\/a>, Provo, through October 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dynamism of the natural world surrounds us: we are part of systems that grow and decay, process and alter on a continual basis. Nothing is static as matter and substance morph sometimes imperceptibly, and sometimes so dramatically it\u2019s jarring to witness. These changes are at the heart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1515,"featured_media":43025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,3526,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-still-on-view","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/danae_mattes.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 13:09:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43021"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43026,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43021\/revisions\/43026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}